Midnight's Emissary Read online

  That was assuming there was anyone alive to find. There was every possibility that his descendants had died out.

  Thomas stood. “I’ll be taking my leave now.”

  Liam and I watched him walk away.

  Watching the door shut behind him, I said, “I understand his investment in this. What’s yours? You’re an enforcer. Shouldn’t you be making sure the selection goes off without interference?”

  Not that I really understood what an enforcer did. Just that they seemed pretty important in the hierarchy of the vampire world.

  Liam watched me with a thoughtful expression, like he was deciding how much to reveal.

  “The other applicants would not be a good choice for the position.”

  “And he is?” By their own rules, Thomas had broken the most basic covenant, providing support to the children he turned. He might appear not to recognize me, but that could be a deception perpetrated for his own hidden reasons. It would be easier if she could tell Liam, but she was afraid it would give them more of a claim on her. They already had enough as it was.

  Liam didn’t answer as he got up, somehow making sliding out of the booth seem graceful. I always looked like a wounded elephant trying to lumber my way out of these.

  He hesitated once standing. “I look forward to working with you on this.”

  Working together? I really didn’t think so.

  I gave him a polite smile. “Hermes couriers work alone.”

  The smile he gave me was full of teeth. It was the type that said the lion thought its dinner was adorable.

  “Jerry has made an exception this time. We’ll be working very closely on this. I’ll be in touch later tonight so we can map out our next steps.”

  He gave me a flick of the fingers in goodbye before following his friend.

  I grimaced at his back. He’d be in touch. Not if I could help it.

  Jerry and I were going to have a little talk. He let me walk into this unprepared so I could be ambushed. Oh yes, we were going to have a long, very loud talk, and I wasn’t going to let the fact that he was my boss and very intimidating stop me. That’s what phones were for after all. To give you time to hide when you poked the bear.

  Chapter Four

  Predictably Beatrix was the one to answer when I called Jerry’s number.

  “Hermes Courier Service. We’ll come to you. How may I help?”

  “Put him on, Janice.”

  “Aileen.” My name was a curse.

  “Now that we’ve established the obvious, put him on.”

  “Jerry’s busy at the moment.”

  I bit back a growl.

  “Put. Him. On.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s just not possible.”

  Deep breath. Threats of physical violence wouldn’t work. I needed to be smarter than the obnoxious secretary.

  “Janice, this is for a job. I need to talk to Jerry. If you keep stone walling me, I will be forced to use my own judgement. Do you really want me to do that?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then a click and a slight buzz as the call was transferred.

  I allowed myself a small moment of victory, which vanished the moment Jerry answered.

  “Aileen.” His voice was terse.

  “Jerry. Is there a reason you didn’t warn me?”

  “I was told not to.”

  “Since when do you listen when clients tell you how to conduct your business?”

  Hermes was notorious for blacklisting people if they got out of line. Jerry had always run his business in the way he saw fit. I’ve never heard of him bending to others wishes.

  “Since the vampires said they’d put a kill order on any of my couriers running a job.”

  I was quiet. Yeah, that might do it.

  I mentally bumped this selection thing they were talking about to a higher priority level.

  “They have to be bluffing.”

  “That may be, but I wasn’t willing to risk it. I’ll go to war if necessary but not when it can be easily avoided by doing what we would do anyway.”

  Made sense. It was the same reason I hadn’t pushed back on Liam when he threatened Jerry and Hermes. They might be bluffing, but it wasn’t worth testing that assumption. Yet.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose.

  “Shit.”

  I had to do the job or at least give the appearance of doing the job.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you. I know you wanted nothing to do with the vampires, but this is your mess. You can’t keep running from them forever.”

  I never planned to run forever. Just the next hundred years or so. Maybe once I could protect myself, I’d feel safe interacting with them, though I doubted it.

  “If I don’t do the job?” I asked.

  His sigh was heavy. “You’ll be cut loose. You’ll have no protection. It won’t just be the vampires after you then. Any spook could come gunning for you. I don’t think even the sorcerer’s mark could protect you from all of them.”

  “Fine. I get it. I’ll do the job.”

  I did get it. He had to look out for himself and his people. As much help as he’d given me, I wasn’t one of them. Not really.

  We hung up.

  Despite what Liam had said, I still planned to do other jobs. Some of these had been on my schedule for weeks. No way was I letting another courier take over my routes. The bastards would refuse to give them back.

  I couldn’t stop a snort of laughter, thinking about what Liam and Thomas wanted. I needed to find Thomas’s descendants. Well, shit.

  The part that bugged me was how Thomas didn’t recognize me when I was sitting across from him. You would think he would have leapt at evidence that his little performance problem was a thing of the past. He was the one who’d turned me after all. Instead he acted like he’d never met me before in my life.

  * * *

  My first run of the night took me to a bar just north of Clintonville. The many bike paths the city had developed made short work of getting me to my destination. I didn’t even have to brave many streets or their crazy drivers.

  The brisk air felt nice on my face and helped clear my head of some of the negative emotions and thoughts from the meeting with Liam and Thomas.

  The ride brought a few things into perspective. Just because I took the job with the vampires didn’t mean I had to produce results. Nothing in my contract stipulated a penalty should I fail to find the descendants or the witch.

  I checked the contract after my conversation with Jerry. No penalty clause had been added. That left me a lot of wiggle room to work with. As long as I made them think I was doing my best, I should be safe. Ish.

  The bar I was supposed to meet my client at was a sad looking building with a bright sign out front saying the Blue Pepper. A sombrero perched on the P. Despite the general air of disrepair, the parking lot seemed full enough. People didn’t seem to care what their watering hole looked like as long as it served good drinks.

  Of course some of the draw may have been more magical in nature.

  I propped my bike against a pole and wrapped my bike lock around it before heading around to the back.

  The shadows were thick here. While the parking lot had adequate lighting, the owner never bothered to put more than one light out back and that hung over the door employees used to take a smoke break.

  My contact stood under that light, puffing away on a cigarette as she stared into the shadows.

  “How is that djinn cuff working for you?” she asked, without turning her eyes toward me.

  I stopped besides her, not even questioning how she knew that I’d put it to use. “So far so good.”

  “You know, when I gave you that, I didn’t expect you to turn around and use it on a sorcerer.”

  Neither had I.

  Its use had been born partly from desperation and partly from impulse.

  “You never said not to.”

  She snorted. “Of course not. I didn’t think I had to spell out what a
bad idea it would be to constrain a sorcerer. Kind of like I shouldn’t have to point out the utter stupidity of pulling a tiger’s tail.” She took another puff of her cigarette. “You’re lucky it was Barrett’s former apprentice you used it on or otherwise you’d be dead by now.”

  Some luck. I was pretty sure he was going to kill me as soon as I took that thing off. Since I was indebted to him for the next hundred years, it wasn’t like I could remove it and then hide until he forgot who locked him away from his power.

  “What can I say, Dahlia? I like to live dangerously.”

  Not really. I preferred a life of peace but that never quite worked out for me.

  “You’re an idiot.”

  I grinned, not taking the words to heart. She’d called me an idiot nearly every time I did a job for her. I’d long since learned it was a term of affection.

  Dahlia was a tall woman with almond shaped eyes and stick straight hair the color of the shadows she stared into. The mass fell in a sheet to the middle of her back. Her skin was a dusky gold that always made her look sun kissed. She was blessed with good bone structure, all graceful lines and delicate details. That delicacy was a lie though, I’ve seen her pick a man up and throw him out of her bar. Literally throw him out. I think he sailed six feet.

  She was my first client after Hermes hired me and my favorite.

  “You got my stuff?”

  Of course I had her stuff. “Would I be here if I didn’t?”

  “Guess not.”

  I pulled my messenger bag around and dug through it until I found a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine.

  She took the package and untied it, revealing several packets and what looked like dried up sticks. The smell told me they were spices, though none seemed familiar. I delivered this same package once a month, and it was always the same type of stuff.

  “It’s all here.” She selected a stick and held it out to me. “Would you like one?”

  This was the first time she’d offered me anything from the package.

  “What is it?”

  Her loose shirt slid to the side to bare the delicate bones of her collar bone and shoulder. She shrugged gracefully. “Try it and find out.”

  I shook my head and pulled my phone out of my bag, tapping on it to get to the appropriate screen. When I had her job pulled up, I held it out to her.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

  Her lips tilted in a sly smile as she pressed her thumb to the screen. It lit up green, showing that the package had been delivered on time.

  “Maybe next time, then.”

  Not if I could help it. I’ve learned accepting strange gifts had a habit of coming back and biting me in the ass.

  I took the phone and tucked it in my bag.

  “Anything new?” I asked.

  Dahlia’s bar saw a lot of traffic of the supes who lived in the area. She heard all kinds of things and for whatever reason she was sometimes willing to share that information with me.

  “Lots of things are happening.” She slid me a glance. “Things like the selection.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. I got the feeling Liam and Thomas would prefer the rest of the supernatural community be kept in the dark about the selection and since I was technically employed by them, I couldn’t talk about anything relating to the job.

  “Don’t worry, little vampire.” She smiled at me. “I won’t pry.”

  I gave her a small smile. For all that she was a client, I considered Dahlia a sort of friend. Or at least a friendly acquaintance. I didn’t want to ruin that because of the bossy duo.

  “I’ve been hearing things,” she said, her face turning serious. “Things that, if true, are disturbing.”

  I held my silence, letting her work through whatever internal dialogue was going on in her head. She’d share or she wouldn’t. Sometimes she’d start speaking and then just trail off, staring into the dark. No amount of pushing or prodding could make her talk again. I’ve learned that patience and silence work better to get her started again.

  She puffed on her cigarette, staring into the dark while the smoke drifted into shapes.

  Just when I thought this would be one of those times she disappeared into her own world, she said, “It might be better for you to see it yourself. I may be seeing things that aren’t there.”

  I waited a beat. “Ok. Is there something you want to show me?”

  “No, but he may.”

  She gestured with the cigarette, pointing into the night. I followed where she was indicating, not seeing anything at first.

  My eyes adjusted quickly. Vampires had superior night vision so it wasn’t difficult to see into the darkness.

  I overlooked him the first and second time. He blended into the shadows quite well. If it hadn’t been for the bright red shoes, I might have continued looking right past him.

  He was the size of a child and dressed in jeans and a wind breaker. His bald head said he was an adult, not a child roaming without their parent’s knowledge. His features were unfinished, like someone had started molding a sculpture before getting distracted half way through. His chin and cheekbones were blunt, his nose lumpy. His skin was gray with a waxy sheen to it.

  I knew him. He was a hobgoblin and liked to play pranks on some of Dahlia’s customers. The pranks weren’t anything big or particularly vicious, just small things like switching their drinks with another’s or stealing their keys and putting them back in the wrong pocket.

  “Is that Rick?” I asked as I walked closer.

  “Yes.” Dahlia stayed in the bar’s doorway.

  “Hey, Rick. What’re you doing out here?”

  His eyes were dull. They had no life behind them. Any expression on his face had been wiped clean, as if it was a blank slate.

  “Rick.”

  I touched his shoulder lightly. When he didn’t respond, I shook him. Then shook him again harder.

  “Rick, wake up,” I said sharply.

  “It’s useless,” Dahlia said, appearing at my side. “He won’t respond.”

  “Is this what you were talking about?”

  She made a hm sound.

  I didn’t know what that meant.

  I frowned at Rick, not liking the total lifelessness of him. He might as well have been a statue. He was normally so animated, never able to stand still for more than a few seconds. His mouth always going a mile a minute. He considered silence the equivalent of torture and always felt the need to fill it.

  This was disturbing. Anybody could walk up and kill him, and he wouldn’t be able to lift a finger to stop it. A normal could stumble across him and decide he made a good lawn ornament.

  “How long has he been like this?” I asked

  Dahlia cocked her head, her eyes studying the hobgoblin.

  I waited, somewhat impatiently this time.

  “Dahlia?” I asked again. “How long has he been like this?”

  Her eyes shifted to me. “A few days.”

  “And you left him out here where anybody could find him?”

  I’d thought the two of them were friends.

  She turned and walked back into her bar.

  Well, that was helpful.

  I turned back to the hobgoblin. This really wasn’t any of my business. Rick, unlike Dahlia, had never been particularly friendly, but he also hadn’t gone out of his way to make my life miserable.

  I owed him nothing.

  I made a sound of frustration and picked him up. What had this guy been eating? He must have weighed over a hundred pounds. Even with the increased strength vampirism gave me, I was sweating by the time I got him to the back door of the bar.

  Maybe I could put him in the storage room and stack some boxes around him. It wasn’t much, but it was better than leaving him out in the open.

  As I finished placing the last boxes around him, Rick’s eyes blinked once and then again. Holding one of the boxes, I stepped closer.

  “Rick?”

  His gaze
focused on me. His mouth opened and a high pitched wail came out. I jumped back in shock. The boxes exploded outward, and a gray streak raced past me. He scurried across the room and huddled in the corner.

  What the hell just happened?

  One moment he was doing his impression of a statue, and then he was racing around the room like his hair was on fire.

  I hesitated to approach, the sight of him muttering to himself and rocking back and forth like his world was about to end leaving me uncomfortable. Like I was the reason for his terror.

  “Hey, Rick. Do you remember me?” No response came. “It’s Aileen. We met a few times at Dahlia’s bar.”

  “Dahlia.” His voice was soft as he momentarily stopped rocking.

  “Yeah. That’s where we are right now. Dahlia’s bar, the Blue Pepper.”

  “Blue Pepper.”

  Great, now I had a parrot on my hands.

  “Yeah, the Blue Pepper. Do you remember how you got here?”

  His hands came up to cover his head and his muttering got louder.

  Ok, that was evidently a traumatic subject. I needed to find a way to calm him down so I could get some good information out of him. The problem was I didn’t know him well enough to know what might help him focus on something non-threatening. I needed Dahlia.

  “Hey, it’s ok. You don’t have to think about that right now,” I tried. I was not the most comforting person. I’ve always been the one staring awkwardly when someone breaks down in tears while asking myself why they couldn’t have picked a better place to have a meltdown. One that wasn’t so public, or you know, in my vicinity.

  Needed a distraction. What could I say?

  “Oh, that prank you played on those annoying bankers was pretty funny. I wonder how long it took them to figure out you switched their wallets.”

  This had happened the last time I was in the Blue Pepper. A pair of men from the local office for a national bank had made asses out of themselves and heckled some of the regulars. Rick had switched their wallets, which happened to be identical. The two still hadn’t figured out the switch by the time they stumbled out to their cab.

  “Three days,” he said.